What a day!

Wednesday.

A normal day turned into a series of new experiences.

The Visa Card was used at the local ATM, and went OK except No receipt and NO money. Since we leave in a couple of days we wanted to be sure our money hadn't just 'disappeared', and went into the CRDB head office in Mbeya.

We had to catch the dallah dallah, and got one at Soweto, no problems. Our packed vehicle got to the next stop, meandered along another couple of hundred metres, went past the market and pulled over. The conductor and driver hopped out and wandered over to another bus. We weren't sure what was happening, neither was anyone else. After about 5 minutes people started getting off. What was going on? Turns out he hadn't actually complete his last run to the far point at Uyoli, and had headed back into town, picking up passengers. The driver was thought he was going to get caught, so just stopped. I assume he was going out to Uyoli after we left. Who knows, but there were no angry customers, we all just got off and caught another dallah dallah.

OK, so we all pile in another vehicle, which has to make a stop at the petrol station just after we got on!

On the way home dallah dallah were scarce (unusual), and when the first ones arrived they were swamped. We got on the third one, but didn't really listen to the 'call'. When our packed dallahdallah (we only got up to 26 people in the battered 15 seat Toyota Hi Ace) got to Manjelwa I was standing up. I moved and sat in a vacated seat as many people, everyone else but me, were getting off. I had thought it strange that the bus did a U-turn at the bus stop. When the 'conductor', who had not spoken a word of English to this point, looked at me and said firmly (but politely) "My father, THIS is Manjelwa" I got the message - and got off.

We walked the rest of the way.

It didn't happen on Wednesday, but I finally got a good picture of maandasi being cooked in the food hall. The chappati lady makes them at about 5.30 pm each night, but got one of her helpers to work at the stove for my photo.